


We’re Obviously All Very Fond of Gaby

by Jaded_Girl_83



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Attempted Sexual Assault, Blood and Violence, F/M, Gen, honeypot mission, the red mist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-14 18:25:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded_Girl_83/pseuds/Jaded_Girl_83
Summary: Do not try to harm Gabriella Teller.Her partner has no chill.Her other partner has no conscience.And her boss has no f*cks left.





	We’re Obviously All Very Fond of Gaby

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out and a virtual cookie bouquet to the INCOMPARABLE DIADEMA and her AMAZING beta-ing skillz!
> 
> Cultural and historical notes below, as well as translations for non-English words. All errors are mine.

Illya hated these so-called “honeypot” missions. Unfortunately, they tended to be extremely effective. His only consolation was that Gaby hated them also. 

Well, perhaps half of them. She seemed to enjoy dressing up, flirting, and playing mind games. But eventually, the marks would be sufficiently enraptured by her to make their moves, and from that point Gaby’s smiles always held the tiniest edge of distaste, and Illya’s fingers would start tapping incessantly. It was why Cowboy was usually sent as her backup in this sort of situation, but he was tracking down another lead tonight, and would meet them at the safe house later. 

And so it was that Illya was stuck in an ill-fitting waiter’s outfit, serving hideously expensive champagne to decadent Westerners and trying not to glower at the powerfully-built man who had been reeled in by Gaby’s fluttering lashes. He was not succeeding very well in the latter. Their mark, Guillaume Martine, was supposed to be an important asset to a new criminal organization known as THRUSH, and to Illya’s experienced eye, he seemed more dangerous (and certainly more muscular) than your average corrupt, capitalist businessman. 

Martine and Gaby had been an item all evening, locked in conversation that looked far more serious than the vapid drivel the rest of the room was repeating ad nauseam. That was expected; their true aim was for Gaby to be recruited into this shadowy organization. And Little Chop Shop was very good at her job. A rush of pride eased the foreboding expression on Illya’s face for about three seconds before Martine leaned over to whisper something into her ear—once more reducing Illya to a silent Soviet thundercloud.

Whatever was whispered caused Gaby’s eyes to lock with Illya’s from across the room. Illya tensed and started drifting towards the kitchen as he tried to watch her without being too obvious about it. Gaby turned passionate, borderline fanatical eyes upon the other man, and whispered something earnest-looking in reply, her hand lighting on top of the brawny arm.

Their mark’s eyes flashed with satisfaction, and they began making their way to the ballroom’s exit, Gaby’s tiny hand wrapped over the man’s meaty one. Gaby met Illya’s eyes once more, and he nodded. Time for phase two.

Illya strode towards the kitchen, eager to abandon this “dog and pony show” (as Cowboy called it) in favor of the tech, surveillance, and back-alley skulking that was his forte. He dodged around overdressed and over-perfumed bourgeois partygoers while balancing a tray of empty champagne flutes, until a stocky man stepped in front of him as he reached the double doors leading to the kitchen. 

“Hey, Stretch!” the catering supervisor hissed in a low voice, grabbing Illya by the elbow. Illya forced his muscles not to react to such a foolish action and assumed the most innocent face he could muster. “Would you stop frowning?” the man snapped. “You’re killing our clients’ appetites!”

Illya plastered an idiotic American smile on his face—too wide and toothy to be comfortable on any Russian. Perhaps the supervisor thought so as well, for he flinched back and withdrew his hand. “You know what?” he amended. “Just take over filling up the glasses in the kitchen. Nathan can deliver the drinks.”

This was fortuitous. Illya gave a brief acknowledgement, and with another thirty strides, had abandoned his serving tray and stepped through the kitchen exit into the chilly October night. He rounded the back corner of the building, stripping out of his vest and tie and retrieving the black duffle bag resting almost invisibly against the mansion’s outer wall. He quickly pulled a black turtleneck over his stark white oxford and jammed a dark cap over his head, his mind still counting the seconds that Gaby had been out of his sight. Somewhat protected from the moonlight, Illya scaled the side of the building and jimmied open a second-storey window. The blueprints that Cowboy had provided proved accurate, thankfully, as Illya climbed into an unused dormitory.

With only a whisper of noise, he set up the surveillance master box. He had been working with U.N.C.L.E.’s techs to scale down the size of the equipment while boosting the range. He wound a small, flat receiver over one ear and flipped a switch. Immediately, Gaby’s husky voice came through, and a small dot began to blink on the handheld tracker screen.

With a grunt of satisfaction, Illya identified the part of the mansion she was traveling through and started closing the distance between them. They were heading in the general direction of the garages—the opposite end of the mansion from the kitchens. The mansion was enormous, and he would have to take a roundabout path to avoid the staff bustling about for the party. It would take maybe five minutes to rendezvous, he estimated, if there were no complications. He frowned at the tracker screen as he crept through endless side hallways, keeping to the shadows and striving for utter silence.

Martine was talking now. _[My associates are always eager to gain support from talented individuals.]_

 _[I can’t see why they wouldn’t gain support from everyone,]_ she replied, passion in her voice. _[This world is corrupt and dying. We need strong hands and brilliant minds if we are to take back our future from the capitalist American pigs… and those_ terribly overbearing _Russians.]_

Illya’s mouth twisted. _Very funny, Chop Shop._ But the knot in his chest eased a bit, seeing that she was comfortable enough to tease him over the bugged ring. 

A door to his left opened, and Illya darted behind a suit of armor, barely fitting between it and the wall and feeling much too exposed for his liking. His worries were unnecessary; the rumpled couple emerging from the room was too drunk to note inconsistencies in the shadows along the hallway, even if they had taken their eyes (and lips and hands) off of each other for more than three seconds at a time. Illya gritted his teeth and glared at them through the gaps in the armor, willing them to walk faster. Gaby might need his help at any moment. He risked shifting the tracker screen so he could see; she seemed to have reached the garage now.

The couple finally rounded a corner, and Illya continued on his way, trying to catch up to both Gaby and the conversation coming in over his earpiece. _[Oh, my associates are quite well informed,]_ Martine was saying. _[As you will see.]_

There was the sound of a door opening, and a few seconds of silence. Then, Gaby’s voice came over the receiver. _[What is this?]_

Illya’s heart seized up, and he began to jog, risking a bit more noise to close the distance more quickly. He knew her better than anyone (better than Cowboy did, no matter what _he_ said) and was not fooled by the light, bemused tone of voice. He heard the sudden tension underneath and knew she had spotted trouble. Five minutes away might be too long.

The small noise of a door closing was all too loud to Illya’s ear, and the even more subtle click of a lock turning caused a warm haze to invade the periphery of his vision. _[Why, it’s a room. Just a harmless little room. It even has this lovely table and chair.]_

She gave a chuckle that aped coy amusement. _[I can see that. But I was under the impression that you were going to show me—]_

 _[Rest assured that you will be shown quite a lot, though I doubt it will be what you expected,]_ Martine responded, smug. _[You see, THRUSH has a certain policy when it comes to spies, Miss Teller.]_

Her name. He had her real name. Illya abandoned all caution and broke into a run. 

_[What are you talking about?]_ Gaby retorted, her voice offended and supercilious. _[My name is—]_

 _[False!]_ he barked. _[Do not take me for a fool! I have done my research, Gabriella. I know who you are, and I know who you work for.] ___

She paused, and then gave a reluctantly impressed huff. _[I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to deny it. But how in the world did you figure it out?]_

Yes, this was good. Keep him talking until—

_[Trying to delay me, are you? You are good, I admit. I am almost tempted, even though I know what you’re up to. But no. You’re going to come with me, and you’re going to come with me_ now. _My superiors will be pleased to get all the information I’ve gathered, and they will be very pleased to make your acquaintance. We shall all—]_ his drawling voice now held a different type of threat that made Illya’s whole world _bleed, [—enjoy_ knowing _you bett—]_

The voice cut off with a sudden yowl, and Illya heard rapid footfalls and the turn of a doorknob before Gaby’s cry of pain cut straight through his chest. There was the sound of impact—close impact, Gaby’s ring-hand hitting the ground—and a door slamming shut again. _[Bitch!]_ Martine snarled, his voice pitched higher than before, _[You’ll pay for that!]_

Illya tore through the corridors as grunts and blows echoed through the bug. Gaby seemed to be putting the chair and table to good use, and he was almost certain that he heard her judo-flip the thug just as Illya had taught her. He was too frantic to feel properly proud, though, especially when the receiver blared out a deafening pop right into his eardrum.

A gunshot. Small caliber.

She’d used—

Had she? Or had _he_?

Had there been a cry of pain? Hers or his? Illya couldn’t tell over the ringing in his ear. Couldn’t hear her _breathing…_

Stairway. He was close. He ripped the speaker from the compromised ear and fastened it to the other. It slapped against his face as he descended the steps two and three at a time.

He finally heard a voice. _[The Kiss of Death?]_ Martine panted, shock turning his voice hollow. _[Are you screwing a KGB agent or something?]_ His voice deepened, pleased. _[Pity you only managed a flesh wound.]_

There was another series of scuffles as Illya finally—finally!—reached the garage. He took six seconds to incapacitate three startled valets and scanned the cavernous space for doors. The commotion over the speaker ended with Gaby’s bark of pain and the ear-splitting sound of the bugged ring hitting concrete and scraping against it. Underneath that noise, he could hear Gaby’s heavy breathing and angry grunts of effort, but the garage itself remained stubbornly silent. Illya frantically checked the tracker screen, but he was too close for it to be of further use.

He heard a thick, satisfied chuckle. _[You are a spitfire,]_ Martine gloated, the leer in his voice painting the world scarlet and causing Illya’s hands to shake so badly he dropped the tracker. _[I like that. Let’s see how much fight you have in you.]_

There was a tearing sound, and Gaby’s scream, **_[ILLYA!!!]_** , sounded clearly into his left ear…

…and more muffled into his right.

Illya zeroed in on where the faint scream had sounded and located the hidden door without conscious thought. Blood surging through his throat and ears and eyes, he broke open the door with a single, powerful kick.

Gaby was pinned to the floor with Martine atop her. The man had no time to react before Illya had crossed the room and hauled him off of her with one hand. Then Illya saw her beautiful gown ripped away from one shoulder, deep enough to expose the top of her breast…

And the Red Mist descended.

There was nothing distinct in the fog. Memory did not exist there. Just vague, distant sensations of sharp edges and dull impacts, the fire of split skin and the bite of creaking bones. He eventually became aware of his hand holding something large, something slippery that smashed repeatedly into his palm, the impact hard and jarring enough to tingle through his calluses and make his bones ache…

A flash of white broke through the crimson haze—an angel in ivory satin. Dark, dark eyes, frantic and pleading, effortlessly dominated the Mist, dominated his _whole self_ , commanded his being into willing servitude. One hand—so tiny, like a child’s—grasped his wrist. Her other hand reached up to cover his cheek. His whole world became that hand, so blissfully soft and cool. A soothingly familiar voice called his name over and over.

The shattered pieces of the material world shifted towards her, drawn in by her gravity to slowly coalesce into a picture that he could make sense of. Gaby was pressed against him, both of her hands moving to rest on his chest. Relief was edging out the alarm in her eyes, and with a shaky breath and a mumble of German words that he was not at the moment capable of translating, she again cradled his face in her hands.

His own hands were covered in blood.

The face Illya was still holding in his hand was covered in blood. As was the body attached to it.

Illya released the man and took several steps away from Gaby, shaking with reaction and the sudden need for her to be as far from the blood as possible. As the body hit the ground, the throat inside the body gave a pained, wheezing bleat of pain.

Not dead, then. Not yet.

Pity.

“Illya,” Gaby said again, caution creeping back into her voice.

Illya immediately focused on her, relaxing for an instant before the incongruous sight of one bare shoulder made his anxiety spike all over again. “Are you all right?” he rasped, his accent so thick as to be almost unintelligible.

“Fine,” she quickly reassured him. “I’m fine.” She gave him a smile—a shaky but brave attempt at raillery. “I had him on the ropes.”

He felt his face soften. He brought his hand up to pull the lock of hair away from her eyes, but dropped it again as soon as it entered his vision, red as the Mist. He tried to smile back. “You flipped him. As I taught you.”

She straightened, throwing back her shoulders in triumph. “I did.” Her dark eyes darkened further, unfathomable brown depths. “You’re a good teacher.”

His arms itched to hold her, but his hands itched with drying blood. Siberian winter howled through his eyes as he looked down at the wheezing lump of meat curled up on the floor. Gaby followed his gaze and grimaced. “We need to get out of here. I’ll hotwire one of the cars. See if you…” She winced as she looked at his hands. “See if you can find a sink.”

  


* * *

  


With a hum of satisfaction, Solo turned off the heat and transferred the pan to a cool burner. Unable to resist, he briefly uncovered the pan, braving plumes of steam to savor the delicate scent of saffron, garlic, and shellfish.

The dull crackle of tires on concrete sounded through the open kitchen window. He raised an eyebrow as he saw a car pull up in front of the house. Gaby and Peril were back early and not in a car he recognized; unusual but not unprecedented. _Just in time for dinner,_ he mused as he stepped out the door to meet them.

The car had barely settled into park before the passenger’s side door flung open and Peril stalked out, looking like a nuclear warhead about to blow. Solo’s smirk vanished. “What happened?” he demanded, concern making his tone uncharacteristically sharp.

Peril’s answer was not delivered in standard Russian, but in the filthiest string of _mat_ Solo had ever heard. Buried somewhere in the blistering diatribe was an obscene variation of _bagazhnik_ , and with a wary eyebrow raised skyward, Solo stepped over to the trunk.

He had the lock jimmied open in five seconds. Solo flinched as he saw a mangled mess of a man wheezing and gurgling out of what was (optimistically) one collapsed lung. “Good god, Peril!” he croaked, staring at Illya hovering around the driver’s side door. “What in the world…”

His words trailed off into oblivion as Gaby stepped out of the vehicle. Bruising in the distinct pattern of fingers darkened her skin at the neck and shoulder, the latter showing through the ripped fabric of her evening gown. And not the sort of sartorial damage that would happen in a scuffle, but the kind inflicted with a clear intent to expose. The mechanic’s small hand immediately raised the jagged flap of satin back to cover her shoulder.

Napoleon felt something settle into his blood—something soft and cold, like snow. But then Gaby’s gaze met his, and he could breathe properly again. Her dark eyes were shaken but not traumatized; if anything, her expression was more annoyed and embarrassed. Her chin lifted in pert defiance, and Solo knew that if all was not well with the world yet, it would be again in short order. He would make sure of that.

The least he could do was spare her further embarrassment. Solo gave a theatrical sigh as he waved a hand at her dress. “This _would_ happen to an Oleg Cassini. But I suppose I should be grateful that you didn’t spill cocktail sauce all over it this time.” She blinked, and he smirked when her mouth screwed up in irritation. “Oh well. Go on and get comfortable. The paella is resting; it should be ready to eat in ten minutes or so.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but there was gratitude in the split-second that they met his. With Peril still hovering at her elbow, she started up the brownstone’s front steps. “I’ll take the keys, Gaby dear,” Solo called over his shoulder, his tone light. Offhanded.

Gaby turned back, perplexed and hesitant. But Peril seemed satisfied with whatever he saw in Solo’s eyes, and promptly plucked the keys out of her hand and tossed them over. Solo caught them deftly and twirled the ring around his finger. “Back in a bit. Paella’s on the stovetop.”

  


* * *

  


Waverly was not usually inclined to glare at people, but the temptation to do just that was steadily increasing as he stared down—and was stared down by— the three agents sitting on the other side of his desk.

He glanced down at the bewildering photographs. A lesser man would have run his hands through his hair. “Forgive my bluntness,” he began, briefly shutting his eyes to gather himself, “but what the devil happened?”

“Mission was compromised,” Kuryakin rumbled, his accent rougher than usual. His fingers tapped against his bicep. “Target was aware of our status as U.N.C.L.E. agents. Situation could not be salvaged.”

“Couldn’t be salvaged? The situation, Kuryakin,” Waverly bit out, waving a hand over the photos, “has become a complete debacle! No leads, no intel, no infiltration, and a crime scene that we had to publicly take control of! _And what the devil happened to Martine?_ ”

“He died,” Solo remarked, his voice utterly innocent and faintly astonished, as if Martine’s body had been discovered lying peacefully abed instead of stuffed in the boot of a blackened, burnt-out car dredged from the bottom of the Charles River.

They’d had to identify him by his dental records.

And there had been so much damage to the jaw that even that had been damned near impossible.

“He _died_?” Waverly echoed, incredulous. And frankly, flabbergasted. He had never before encountered such stonewalling from his team. Solo sat back in his chair, all ease and conversation and knife blades as he kept full eye contact. Kuryakin, stiff and brittle, gripped the armrests hard enough to splinter the wood as he leveled a furious glare at nothing on the other side of the room. And Gaby—

Gaby couldn’t keep eye contact.

The sheer unusualness of that gave Waverly pause. Her gaze skittered away from him—tense, self-conscious, embarrassed. Her hands were clasped and resting on her lap, but her knuckles showed sharp contrasts of red and white. She’d narrowed her shoulders, and her knees were pressed together just a bit too tightly, feet crossed at the ankle and tucked under her chair.

Waverly’s mouth went dry. He looked from her to her partners, reading their body language in a whole new light.

“I see,” he said in a more reflective voice, gathering the photographs into a neat pile.

He then tossed them into the bin.

“Well,” he said absently, snagging another file and ignoring the sidelong glances his agents exchanged among themselves. “We’ll put Chambers on clean-up; he just got back from Havana. Now. There’s some disturbing chit-chat coming out of Madagascar. We’ve just heard from a contact in Cape Town that shipments of…”

**Author's Note:**

> Gaby’s dress based on an Oleg Cassini ivory evening dress worn by Jackie Kennedy in 1962:  
> https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKMUS-MO-1963-1332.aspx
> 
> The Kiss of Death is a 4.5mm single-shot pistol disguised as lipstick and was an actual, real life thing that KGB spies used ~~and is also, incidentally, on my birthday list if anyone is wondering what to get me…~~ One that had been confiscated in West Berlin is currently on display at the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.!
> 
>  _Mat_ (pronounced: maaht) is a Russian… well, it’s kind of an entire dialect devoted to obscenities. That’s right—THE ENTIRE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE WAS NOT SUFFICIENT TO CONVEY THE DEPTH AND BREADTH OF RUSSIAN SWEARING SO THEY DEVELOPED A SUB-LANGUAGE FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF CURSING MORE EFFECTIVELY. It is currently outlawed in all Russian media. How profane is it? Well, to compare, when American films are imported, they usually translate “f*ck” and “sh*t” into the Russian equivalents of “darn” and “crap” because they don’t consider our cursing to be nearly as bad as theirs. _Wow._
> 
>  _bagazhnik_  
>  Cyrillic: багажник  
> Roughly pronounced: bah-gahzsh-NEEK  
> Russian: the trunk (American)/boot (English) of a car


End file.
